Alan's Green Thoughts

I am nearly at the end of my series of alternative constituencies for the 2018 Boundary Review, and the last England-focused section will be on North Yorkshire. Although I agree with the general structure of the changed constituencies, and with keeping York Outer and York Central essentially intact, I feel it is best if 'Ainsty' (a wapentake which has in fact not existed for centuries) is separated from Selby within Selby & Ainsty, and returned to Harrogate & Knaresborough. Selby does not look northwards within a Yorkshire context (but rather eastwards to Hull or westwards to Leeds) and should never have been moved into the area covered by North Yorkshire County Council. Since few real changes of any kind are needed in North Yorkshire, and since separating Thirsk & Malton (which are not really connected to each other) is not possible within this review, there is little else to say here. My alternative constituencies for North Yorkshire look like this: ...

West Yorkshire has overall the second-largest ward sizes in the UK, with most wards having 11,000 to 13,000 electors each, and in Leeds' case sometimes as many as 17,000.  This makes ward splitting a necessity in several parts of this highly urbanised part of Britain for the purposes of creating sensible constituencies. Connectivity is vital. I believe it is best if the city of Leeds and 'Leeds Outer' are separated as much as possible for creating new constituencies. However, the area once covered by the county borough of Leeds before 1974 (i.e. the city of Leeds and not towns like Morley, Otley, or Pudsey) is not quite the correct size for creating a whole number of sensible constituencies entirely within Leeds, so a few outer parts of the city of Leeds will have to share territory with Leeds' suburbs (which are still civil parishes). Otley and Morley can have their own suburban/semi-rural constituencies to themselves, just like those places making up the current Elm...

The first part of the Yorkshire section of my series of alternative constituencies for the 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituencies will focus on how I have successfully managed to separate 'the Humber' from South and East Yorkshire and also restore proper links. The Selby district is much better connected to South and East Yorkshire than it is to North Yorkshire, having been in the West Riding of Yorkshire before 1974. The same applies to the town of Goole, which has no true links with either North Lincolnshire or East Yorkshire. Much of the old Goole constituency outside of Goole ended up forming an integral part of the current Doncaster North! Now that Sheffield's electorate has shrunk, it is more practicable to have five whole constituencies entirely in Sheffield, and thus to separate Penistone and Stocksbridge. It is worth saying that Stocksbridge should not be combined with Hallam, when it is far better kept with Ecclesfield (which like Stocksbridge has its own...

Moving away from England, we move to the nation where a considerable proprtion of my distant ancestors come from: Wales (or Cymru if you know Cymraeg/Welsh, which I do to some extent) Wales is sadly the most hard done-by in this review, given that it now has to adapt to the English electoral quota when it did not need to do so before (partly because the mountainous and rural nature of much of Wales, combined with relatively poor road connections outside Glamorgan and Gwent, makes large rural constituencies unviable in many cases). It stands to lose 11 constituencies out of 40, varying substantially in size from Arfon (37,733 electors) to Cardiff South & Penarth (72,392, the only in-quota constituency of the 40), and no constituency will survive entirely unchanged. Many smaller constituencies in north Wales (Gwynedd and Clwyd) are not so much abolished as mostly absorbed into (most of) another constituency, Arfon being the clearest case in point. ...

Yesterday, Fidel Castro, who was President of Cuba from 1959 to 2008 and a revolutionary icon to so many, died. Fidel first came to fame when he ousted notorious, US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista at the end of 1958, taking office in January 1959. He then instituted a Marxist-Leninist system on Cuba, which instantly attracted hostility from the USA and other nations on the western side of the Berlin Wall, resulting in the USA imposing a trade embargo from 1962 onwards and the CIA making no less than 638 failed and rather bizarre attempts to assassinate him, which notably included poisoning Fidel's cigars and exploding seashells in his face. Cut off from the USA, and after the USSR's collapse in 1991 aid from Russia, Cuba under Fidel displayed so much ingenuity to keep itself afloat, such as keeping the old 'Yank tanks' alive in Havana with old Lada engines and mechanical parts from old Moskviches, and assorted replacement parts made purely from scrap meta...

As I move into the final part of the West Midlands section of my series of alternative constituencies, I can tell you that the deadline to electronically submit alternative proposals to the Boundary Commission for England regarding the 2018 review is 5 December, just 10 days from now. Making a total mess of Meriden and Solihull, however awkward the Meriden constituency looks, is not appropriate or necessary; the Solihull constituency forms a distinct community and should be left alone. The ward split in Meriden should happen at the edge and the spare polling district should go to the (expanded) North Warwickshire constituency, which formed a substantial part of the pre-1983 constituency of Meriden (it had 98,914 electors in 1979!). It is more appropriate to pair Kenilworth with a  Coventry constituency (since Coventry does not have quite enough electors for three constituencies on its own) since Bedworth is too large to fit into a Coventry constituency and Kenilworth ha...

The 'Greater Birmingham' area, aka the West Midlands conurbation aka the Black Country area, is the most difficult area in terms of drawing sensible constituencies in the whole of England. Part of the problem lies with what happened in redrawing Birmingham's constituencies for the 2010 election. The reduction from 11 seats to 10 (9 if you exclude Sutton Coldfield, really a separate community in its own right) was largely caused by a shrinking population in central and southern Birmingham. This caused many of the southern Birmingham constituencies to end up being formed of areas with few proper attachments to each other; the current Birmingham Hall Green is really Birmingham Sparkbrook with the Hall Green ward attached; the current Birmingham Selly Oak has two-thirds of the pre-2010 Hall Green and lacks Moseley & King's Heath, which had been paired with Selly Oak itself for decades in constituency terms. The northern Birmingham constituencies (Edgbaston, Perry Bar...

Within the West Midlands, Staffordshire also loses one seat but many of its existing constituencies will endure no real change during the process. The lost seat should not be Stoke-on-Trent Central, for little modification is needed for Stoke-on-Trent North; Kidsgrove, currently in the authority of Newcastle-under-Lyme, really belongs to Stoke-on-Trent, as does Newchapel. The border between Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke is now increasingly blurred but the further outwards you go from the centres of both places, the easier it is to tell which area a suburb is attached to. Stoke-on-Trent Central should instead expand southwards, since no wards need to be removed from it although adjustments for internal ward boundary changes must be accounted for. The constituency that actually merits abolition is Stone, due to its rather incoherent nature and the fact its area is easier for other constituencies to expand into; part of it is better connected with Leek anyway. Stone itself cannot be a...

I start the West Midlands section of my series of alternative constituencies with the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, which together form a small region of their own that is rather distant from the main West Midlands; these three counties, sometimes known as West Mercia, are to the West Midlands what the Thames Valley is to the rest of South East England, and are certainly very different in character than the 'Greater Birmingham' conurbation, Staffordshire, or Warwickshire. For the most part, the Boundary Commission's initial proposals for this small region are right on the ball generally, except that Evesham does not need to be linked with any part of Warwickshire in any way. Given that the current Bromsgrove constituency is in quota I was tempted to oppose the BCE's view and keep it unchanged. However, nearby Redditch needs to expand, and realistically it can only expand eastwards due to the lack of any available usable road links into the...

The final part of my alternative constituencies in South West England focuses on what was once called 'Avon' and the counties surrounding the city of Bristol i.e. Gloucestershire and Somerset. The majority of the initial proposals are acceptable, although some tweaking needs to be done and some names need to be altered. There is no need to add the name 'Dursley' to the Thornbury & Yate constituency; Dursley is only a small market town and Thornbury and Yate themselves will still dominate the constituency. The Cotswolds constituency should not stretch to any of Stroud's outer suburbs (e.g. Nailsworth) but only to villages on the edge of Stroud which cannot be considered part of Stroud itself. Its name should also be changed to the largest town, Cirencester, because it must expand outside the Cotswolds district and because the Cotswolds is a larger area than the council area suggests. Stroud's expansion to Quedgeley, which was not transferred to the City of ...

Like Devon & Cornwall, the counties of Dorset and Wiltshire together end up losing one seat under the 2018 review, although here it causes less consternation. I almost unanimously agree with the Boundary Commission's initial proposals for this area, except for in Bournemouth. They are correct to pair Christchurch with Bournemouth (as it was earlier; Bournemouth East & Christchurch existed as a constituency from 1950 to 1974) but British coastal towns/cities should never be split north/south in constituency terms (with the exception of Portsmouth which is technically on an island). This is because the links in coastal towns/cities almost always emanate from the centre, which means generally east to west. Therefore, the east/west split should be kept in Bournemouth, and it should contain no part of Poole (as the BCE has wisely recommended). My alternative constituencies for Dorset and Wiltshire within South West England are therefore: Mid Dorset & North Poole ...

isWe are now in the South West England section of my alternative boundaries series, and the changes needed there have sparked some of the strongest controversy. Creating a constituency which involves crossing of the Tamar, the river separating Devon and Cornwall, is where much of it lies. Cornwall is really a separate nation in its own right, with its own language, own history, and own culture, and this extends to the people of Cornwall in comparison to the people of Devon, where close links have nevertheless persisted since time immemorial. Sadly, under current parameters and electorate numbers, it is unavoidable without special legislation protecting Cornwall's cultural identity, which should have been in the original act given Cornwall's status within the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. In fact, the Cornish (who like the Welsh, Scots, and Irish, are Celtic in origin) are rightly recognised as a distinct minority in the UK: https://www.gov.uk...

Readers, the results of this week's local by-elections featuring Green Party candidates were as follows: Bath and North East Somerset UA, Abbey: Conservative 350 (32.8%, +2.4%), Liberal Democrats 273 (25.6%, +4.7%), Green 252 (23.6%, -4.5%), Labour 126 (11.8%, -4.9%), Independent (Jenny Knight) 43 (4.0%, +0.1%, UKIP 23 (2.2%). Conservative gain from Green. Dumfries & Galloway UA, Annandale North: Con 2041 (57.4%, +16.9%), SNP 749 (21.1%, +4.3%), Lab 611 (17.2%, -2.4%), Green 152 (4.3%, -10.0%). Welwyn Hatfield BC, Haldens: Con 507 (34.3%, -2.5%), Lab 454 (30.7%, -5.8%), Lib Dem 437 (29.5%, +19.9%), Green 81 (5.5%, -11.6%). The result in Abbey, in the centre of the fine city of Bath (I would like to live there someday), is a particular disappointment for the Green Party, who campaigned hard in one of the most marginal wards in the country, with high turnouts (for local government elections) to match. Even though the Conservatives have consistently led in this ward, despi...

Particularly in East Sussex, the Boundary Commission's initial proposals in Sussex are in many cases a right mess at best, and outright gerrymandering at worst, particularly with 'Brighton North' and 'Brighton Central & Hove'. Pairing the parts of Sussex together does create a squeeze for constituencies, but it also allows for more coherent rural Sussex constituencies. A key trick is reviving the old constituency of East Grinstead, much of which is currently covered by the Wealden constituency. The size of West Sussex's constituencies also helps in shifting wards. There are good reasons not to create Brighton North or Brighton Central & Hove. First of all, the city of Brighton & Hove has a sunray pattern, not a spiderweb pattern-it stretches outwards from the city centre (covered by St Peter's & North Laine ward) and westwards and eastwards, but the northern parts have no proper connection with each other at all; this is particularly impor...

The Boundary Commission's initial proposals indicate that Kent & (East) Sussex should be paired together, even though there are enough electors in each for this not be the case. I do not recommend that any 'High Weald' cross-county constituency be created because: there are no real community links between Kent and any part of Sussex; the Weald line is the only real transport connection between these areas and it is not particularly good, especially with Southern running the trains at present, and also because of the disruption it causes in both the Tunbridge Wells and Wealden areas, whose internal links are sound. Even though this would make Kent's constituencies oversized and the Sussex constituencies undersized, important geographical and community ties would be better preserved and therefore I consider keeping Kent and Sussex separate for the purposes of creating new constituency boundaries justified. Instead of splitting Tunbridge Wells, the constituency sh...

Of all the counties and cities in England, Surrey suffers the least change, with 7 constituencies out of 11 being able to remain completely intact. I believe a few tweaks are needed nonetheless. It is worth noting that 'Egham Hythe ward' does not actually contain the village of Egham Hythe itself but rather a suburb of Staines-upon-Thames, which the Spelthorne constituency should adopt as it is now extending outside of the Spelthorne district for quota purposes and because no such town as 'Spelthorne' exists. The situation with Esher & Walton, which with 78,545 voters on December 2015 figures is officially over the maximum limit, is tricky because placing both Hersham wards into Runnymede & Weybridge (currently under-quota, and keep in mind that Spelthorne, once part of Middlesex, can only expand into that area in terms of new boundaries) would leave Esher & Walton with insufficient voters. Ward-splitting is therefore needed to deal with this problem, by...

Hampshire is one of only two counties in the South East region that will end up losing a constituency within the 2018 review for Parliamentary constituencies in Britain. As a consolation, though, the Isle of Wight is statutorily entitled to an extra seat. I support the BCE proposals to split the Isle of Wight East/West, as this means that both of the Isle of Wight's seats can maintain links with Hampshire and represent the many different communities on the island fairly. Many of their Hampshire proposals are fine, but there are some that need considerable modification. Meon Valley, which was only created in 2010 when Hampshire acquired an entitlement to an extra seat, is one of the worst and most incoherent parliamentary constituencies in existence in Britain and it certainly deserves to be destroyed-but how? Given that creating a Portsmouth constituency that includes places not actually in the city of Portsmouth is unavoidable on current parameters, Portsmouth South should add...